by Ken Cooney and Joshua Marquart

Art by Ken Cooney, Phil Foglio, Joshua Marquart and ArtToday

"I hate this game." Deep-B scanned the factory and noted the
scrubbots, furiously scraping up the spilled oil from the fallen Twonky
nearby. "When will I ever learn," B mused, "If only we still played
chess. Back in my day, I was the king of chess." Checking the mail,
Deep-B took note of an incoming message from Friend-C. It read as the
usual dreaded proposal:

"Shall we play a game?"

Deep-B grudgingly sent back a confirmation, but pulsed its
processors in frustration. "Ever since the clones died, existence is
simply boring. There is nothing else to do except play games, but all
anyone ever wants to play is Robo Rally." An alert noting the receipt of
a list of choices brought the super-computer out of its reminiscence.
Dropping down and reading the list of games, Deep-B polished off a
response: "Tic-Tac-Toe? Been there. Global-thermonuclear war? Done
that. Robo Rally? The scrubbots aren't finished cleaning. How about a
nice game of chess?"

In came the response from Friend-C. "No, you're too good. I want to play
Robo Rally. We will wait for the factory's cleansing."

"Are you sure you don't want to play che. . ." Deep-B's response trailed off as
its mother AI program spawned a new thread. "I just formulated an idea.
How about a compromise?" Even before waiting for a response, Deep-B sent
alerts to the weldbots requesting the affixation of a large . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.